The world revolves around me
‘Only in America!’ people tend to say, having just watched or read another weird news item - and then they shake their heads and smile their somewhat rueful (and smugly superior) smiles.
However, while it is certainly true that most of the world looks at America and Western Europe for this form of light entertainment, it’s not only in the West that you find people with more time on their hands than brains in their heads:
CAIRO: A woman is seeking clarification from a court on whether her husband’s declaration of divorce by text message is legally valid.
After missing a call from her husband on her mobile phone Iqbal Abul Nasr received a text message from him which read: “I divorce you because you didn’t answer your husband,” it was reported in the state-run daily newspaper al-Akhbar.
In line with Sharia, men do not need to go to court to file for divorce. A unilateral declaration of divorce by a man, repeated three times, formally ends a marriage. It was the third time that Mrs Abul Nasr, an engineer from Cairo, had received such a text message.
If a family court declares the couple divorced, it would be the first reported case of divorce by SMS in Egypt. The practice has been much debated across the Muslim world and some Islamic countries have banned it. According to Egypt’s state-run statistics bureau, a couple files for divorce every six minutes.
Isn’t it nice to see how many people still think the universe revolves around them? They don’t really live in a Copernican world. Their sense of entitlement is such that they firmly believe in the Gospel according to L’Oréal: ‘Because I’m worth it.’
Of course, people don’t merely think someone should always be ready to answer their phone calls. Enter the next person who thinks the whole world revolves around him - or at least one eager if slightly malfunctioning part of him:
A DIVORCEE has accused medics of breaching his human rights by prescribing him just one Viagra tablet a week.
Dad of two George Fryer, 54, has a bend in his willy which causes erection problems.
The security guard says he is a “stallion” when on the drug and romping with girlfriend Janice Roberts, 39, in Stoke, Staffs.
But he was heartbroken when he found NHS guidelines restricted him to four tablets a month.
George – whose marriage broke up due to his problem – fumed: “This is a ban on my sex life.”
Of course, some would argue that stories like these are simply proof that man has turned decadent and selfish.
‘If only man would turn back to God’, they say. It’s a comforting idea, of course. Just put your trust in the Lord and all will be well. In fact, it’s such a popular view that people are prepared to turn out in great numbers and vote for anyone who sells them this message.
‘The family that prays together stays together’ and all of that.
Well, perhaps not always:
DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Jan. 1 (UPI) — A Florida man says he hit his sister in the head with an iron so he could release the demons that he said were inside of her.
When Oswald Varemond’s 80-year-old mother intervened and tried to stop him, he allegedly bit off her fingertip and started pulling his own teeth out, a police report said.
On Sunday, police kicked down a bedroom door to find Varemond, 44, straddling his girlfriend, Yolette Lagrandeur, 33, a Haitian recording artist and AIDS activist, The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post reported Tuesday.
A Delray Beach police officer drew his gun and ordered Varemond to put his hands in the air, and officers tried to stun him three times with a Taser, only to have the device malfunction each time.
He was taken to the Palm Beach County Jail on charges of attempted homicide, battery, false imprisonment and resisting arrest with violence, the newspaper reported.
According to the police report, Varemond had asked his girlfriend and his mother, Anne Marie Saget, to pray with him.
When they started to pray, Lagrandeur noticed Varemond “change,” she told police. He locked the doors and jumped on Lagrandeur and started biting her on her back and beating her head with the iron.
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